Imagine a clandestine chessboard where moves are made not with pawns and knights, but with fabricated news stories, whispers of scandal, and shadowy figures crossing international borders. This isn’t the stuff of spy fiction, but the stark reality laid bare by the recent arrest of Dmitry Novikov in Argentina. A 26-year-old Russian, Novikov isn’t just any tourist; Argentine intelligence agents describe him as a senior operative in “La Compañía,” a Kremlin-linked influence network. This organization allegedly splurged a hefty $283,000 in 2024, strategically planting fake articles designed to discredit Argentina’s President Javier Milei. Their motive? Retribution for Milei’s unwavering support for Ukraine. Novikov’s capture marks a significant moment, offering us the clearest glimpse yet into the sophisticated machinery of Russia’s post-Wagner influence operations – a world where paid articles, manufactured controversies, and mobile agents are deployed to destabilize pro-Ukraine governments from within.
The story really ramps up on May 1st, when a joint operation by Argentina’s Federal Police, State Intelligence Secretariat (SIDE), and National Migration Directorate swooped in on Novikov at a house in Lanús, a southern suburb of Buenos Aires. They’d been watching him for about two weeks. He’d arrived in Argentina just weeks earlier, on April 12th, from Istanbul, ostensibly as a tourist. This wasn’t the first time Argentina had encountered “La Compañía.” Back in June 2025, they’d publicly exposed a local cell, even naming Russian residents Lev Andriashvili and Irina Yakovenko as operators. Then, in April 2026, a treasure trove of 76 internal documents, totaling 1,431 pages, was leaked by a consortium of investigative journalism outlets including openDemocracy and Filtraleaks. These documents revealed the inner workings of the operation, detailing how La Compañía had allegedly paid for over 250 articles across more than 20 Argentine digital news outlets between June and October 2024. This made Argentina their primary target across Africa and Latin America in August 2024 alone. For context, one might imagine this as a vast, digital puppeteer, pulling strings across the global media landscape, turning a country’s own news outlets against its leadership to sow discord and weaken international alliances.
Security Minister Alejandra Monteoliva didn’t mince words when she announced Novikov’s arrest in a social media video. She called him “a threat to the democratic order,” someone who “came to operate, destabilize, and attack our institutions.” Federal Judge Julián Ercolini quickly ordered his preventive detention, citing flight risk and national security concerns, pending deportation. Migration officials followed suit, canceling Novikov’s transit residency, ordering his expulsion, and imposing a permanent re-entry ban. Their reasoning? He had “denatured the reasons that justified his entry”—a polite way of saying he wasn’t there for tourism at all. Interestingly, Novikov had initially booked a return flight to Brazil just a week after his arrival. He never used it, choosing instead to extend his stay in Lanús for nearly three weeks, a decision that ultimately allowed Argentine intelligence, who had been tracking him since mid-April and linked him to La Compañía, to close in. This narrative paints a picture of a calculated individual, seemingly confident in his ability to move unseen, now caught in the crosshairs of a determined intelligence apparatus.
So, who is Dmitry Novikov, this “traveling operative”? He hails from Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, a city in Russia’s Far East, and obtained both his Russian passports in the Moscow region, in 2019 and 2022. But his recent years have been a whirlwind of international travel, cycling through Chile, the Dominican Republic, Colombia, Panama, and Brazil. This isn’t the first time he’s been in trouble; the Dominican Republic deported him in September 2025. Their prosecutor general explicitly stated that Novikov ran “a cyber-influence network linked to the Lakhta or La Compañía project, based in Russia and dedicated to creating and spreading digital content focused on political disinformation campaigns.” The ties don’t stop there. Ukraine’s Center for Countering Disinformation, citing the Netherlands’ Military Intelligence and Security Service, has connected Novikov’s network directly to Russian intelligence services and to the infamous Wagner private military company. This isn’t just about an individual; it’s about a sophisticated, state-backed operation with tentacles reaching across the globe.
“La Compañía”—”The Company”—is presented as the successor to Wagner’s information operations after the death of its leader, Yevgeny Prigozhin. It’s tied to Lakhta, the same structure that U.S. prosecutors highlighted in their 2018 indictments regarding interference in the 2016 U.S. election. The leaked April 2026 archive, a hefty collection of 76 Russian-language documents, revealed the intricate details of their campaign. Between June and October 2024, La Compañía spent over $283,100, publishing more than 250 articles in 23 Argentine digital outlets, with payments ranging from $350 to $3,100 per article. The content was a clever blend of genuine public grievances about Milei’s austerity measures and outright fabrications. One planted story outrageously claimed Milei had dispatched a sabotage team to attack a Chilean gas pipeline. Another equally sensational piece accused him of buying $64,000 worth of Cartier collars for his cloned dogs in the United States. Many of these articles were published without a byline, some even under fictitious identities complete with AI-generated photos. Most editors at the affected outlets denied receiving any payment, with intermediaries reportedly claiming the money came from Argentine businesspeople “worried about national industry.” This paints a chilling picture of an elaborate misinformation campaign, exploiting real concerns to spread outright lies, all while attempting to obscure the true source of funding and influence.
The timing of this broad campaign in Argentina is no coincidence; it perfectly aligns with President Milei’s policy toward Ukraine. Milei took office in December 2023, with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy attending his inauguration. He then joined the Ukraine Defense Contact Group and, notably, withdrew Argentina’s planned accession to BRICS, a group often seen as a counterweight to Western influence. La Compañía’s Argentine operations began in April 2024, and August 2024 saw the highest spending anywhere, even surpassing their operations in Africa. The leaked materials further expose La Compañía’s deeper strategic objectives, showing they analyzed Argentina’s military-industrial complex, mapped its Antarctic oil resources, profiled opposition figures, and even planned to support opposition candidates in Argentina’s 2025 legislative elections. One specific workstream pushed for legislation designed to block Argentina’s adhesion to the Ukraine Defense Contact Group. The campaign seems to have largely wound down after January 2025, when a hypothetical second Trump administration distanced Washington from Kyiv, and Argentina abstained from a UN resolution demanding Russian withdrawal. In essence, the Kremlin’s most expensive Latin American operation achieved its desired outcome – a chilling reminder of how foreign influence can subtly shift a nation’s geopolitical alignment. Dmitri Novikov’s arrest, framed by Ukraine’s Center for Countering Disinformation as confirmation of Moscow’s expanding information war, underscores the systematic, well-funded, and mobile nature of La Compañía’s operations in Latin America. Despite the Russian embassy in Buenos Aires dismissing the investigation as “anti-Russian material,” the fact remains that Novikov, like others, simply leveraged a 2009 visa-free travel agreement between Russia and Argentina, blurring the lines between a legitimate tourist and a state-sponsored operative in a global game of information warfare.